Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Collapsing Standards of Living in the Predatory Oligarchy

I concur with Michael Hudson that the financial crisis facilitated the greatest transfer of wealth to occur since the Great Depression http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10279One way this transfer has occurred is through foreclosures on debt, particularly in housing wherein citizens may have stored some wealth.

The foreclosure process centralizes equity. Banks and elite others can leverage their capital to purchase assets that distressed owners can no longer manage.Banks and other elite interests have through government guarantees, loans, and bailouts, been able to purchase assets at rock bottom prices as a result of the avalanche of debt foreclosures that they (the banks) helped orchestrate in the first place.

The economy would have recovered much quicker if the US government had paid off mortgages rather than providing the too-big-to-fails with endless free money, increasing speculation and enabling predation.

Too bad government policy reflects elite interests, rather than what promotes overall economic and political security.

Since the entire game is about predation, I was hardly surprised to read about foreclosure fraud early this year. For example:

So, given widespread evidence of foreclosure fraud, an independent foreclosure review was suggested. Now we read:

Doubts About Independent Foreclosure Review Spread by Paul Kiel ProPublica, Oct. 19, 2012, http://www.propublica.org/article/doubts-about-independent-foreclosure-review-spread[Excerpted] The idea behind the Independent Foreclosure Review seems simple. During the peak of the foreclosure crisis, the banks broke laws and made errors that hurt homeowners. In response, the government mandated they compensate the victims. But there is growing evidence some banks are playing a major role in identifying the victims of their own abuses, raising the question of
whether the review is compromised by conflicts of interest.

...The OCC did confirm
that some banks' mortgage servicing divisions are coming up with
"self-identified findings of harm/no harm" and presenting them to the
independent consultants. But the OCC would not specify which banks are
doing this....

Private equity group Carlyle Group has invested 20 million up front with the potential for $300 million in debt financing to buy up and rent homes. Sylvan plans on spending more than $1 billion buying up homes over the next 2 years. The article states that institutional investors have already raised $8 billion in equity to buy and rent homes just within the past year.Mr Chang feels that the proportion of people who rent will be growing given the current economic conditions in the country.Majia here: Assets are being shifted from the many to the few. Ownership of housing is but one example, there are others.Consider also the shift in household wealth that has occurred in the wake of the great recession. A detailed analysis and example available below:http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/bill-moyers-interview-with-jacob-hacker.html

Majia
Here: The article describes in detail the shift toward low wages in
manufacturing at about $9 or $10 dollars an hour, with some up to $14 or
$15 an hour. It is notable that most of the jobs described in the
article do offer .

About Me

I am a Professor at a large public university. I study political economy and biopolitics (the politics of life). My interests are diverse but are broadly concerned with economic, social and environmental justice. I have published 5 books: Crisis Communication, Liberal Democracy and Ecological Sustainability: The Threat of Financial and Energy Complexes in the Twenty-First Century (2016); Fukusima and the Privatization of Risk (2013); Constructing Autism (2005); Governmentality, Biopower and Everyday Life (2008/2011); Governing Childhood (2010).
I also participated in an edited collection on Fukushima: Fukushima: Dispossession or Denuclearization (2014).